Theres plenty about Girls to annoy conservatives, yet this often creepy, usually skeevy, critically-acclaimed HBO series is also a test for conservatives.

Will we finally heed Andrew Breitbart's warnings about the importance of taking pop culture seriously or just keep fiddling as the culture burns?

If conservatives are going to be in the popular culture  and act to change it  they cant simply ignore shows like Girls that capture the zeitgeist, even if the zeitgeist makes their skin crawl. Season two is well under way, and conservatives need to participate in the discussion.

Girls is about four young, aimless college grads living in New York. Think of Sex and the City, except Sarah Jessica Parker has doubled her weight, dresses like a potato sack and fancies herself the voice of some undefined generation. Theres sex and nudity  just not hot Homeland sex and nudity. This is the first show in the history of cable television where male viewers actively root for the heroine to keep her clothes on.

Said heroine is played by Lena Dunham, who like most of the starring actresses is the daughter of somebody famous. David Mamets daughter is in it, as is NBCs Brian Williams daughter. But this isnt just some vanity project. They are all talented, and Dunham is very talented. She created the show and writes most of the episodes (and well  the dialogue is sharp and funny), but her fearless portrayal of an awful, awful young woman truly makes the show something special.

There are plenty of red flags for conservatives, off-screen and on. Off-screen is the fact that Dunham is an Ivy_League, wealthy, 26-year-old New Yorker who has all the pretentions and prejudices in real life that one would expect from an Ivy League, wealthy, 26-year-old New Yorker...

Fortunately, for me, this is all irrelevant. I opted out of the TV portion of culture back in ‘88. Haven’t had a box in the house since. It will be a snag on crossword puzzles when their names get into that corner of the literary world because I won’t know who hey are.

Anytime I see some trendy schmuck use the phrase “cultural zeitgeist”, I have the urge to slap them. I have no interest in seeing that ugly, tattooed, Stalinist tub o’guts whore, nor the progeny of the execrable Brian “I’m proud to watch my daughter have sex on tv” Williams (to which he probably pleasures himself to, the sick f***). The faster we nuke this “cultural zeitgeist” from orbit (just to be sure), the better.

The Fat Girl Show didn't even crack the Top 100 shows on cable last week. And I've never heard a real-life flesh and bone human being say two words about the show. The media talk it up and HBO renews it on faith, not ratings.

I think a vile, repulsive (and utterly moronic) show like Shameless, which draws double the audience of TFGS, is a much bigger deal.

That means, statistically speaking in a country of 300 million, almost nobody watches “Girls.”

So how can you even type the word “zeitgeist” in an article about the show and keep a straight face?

“Zeitgeist” does not mean “reflective of what annoying media types and their creepy sibling spouses, bloggers, are talking about.”

For comparative purposes, in its best years, “Seinfeld” averaged 20 million viewers. For its series finale, “Friends” pulled in 52 million. THAT is the zeitgeist — what lots of people are thinking about/talking about.

And if I were a Time/Warner/HBO stockholder, I’d be screaming my head off about continuing to produce a proven loser that will never, ever go into profit.

Breitbart was right about not ignoring things that were successful and really making an impact.

“Girls” is neither. The thing to do is ignore it. Like MOST OF AMERICA already is.

“This is the first show in the history of cable television where male viewers actively root for the heroine to keep her clothes on.”

I said the same thing to myself!

But, it is apparently true, that less than camera-ready women take their clothes off and then have sex, before and even after they are married. Frankly, I’d bet that 1 in 50 people in this country over the age of 23 would look very good on HDTV, naked or not. I was never one of them.

I watch this show as though I was watching a horrific car accident. If this show was made 30-35 years ago, it would be “amazingly”* boring, because I don’t think that we were that much different than our parents. But this - it’s like watching scenes of some degenerating alien race on some distant planet with amazing* similarities to Earth! And I have no reason to believe that it doesn’t reflect the truth. It’s easily the most frightening show on television.**

* Want to have some fun? Try the “drinking game” with the word “amazing” during this show. You will be drunk by the end of the show, and it’s only a half-hour.

The vast majority of young people are NOT even slightly amazing.

**Double negative used here for effect.

22
posted on 01/30/2013 8:21:30 PM PST
by The Antiyuppie
("When small men cast long shadows, then it is very late in the day.")

IMO, the jury is out on Dunham. Don’t forget she writes and produces most of the show. I really don’t think that her intent is to become a “famous actress”. What if she is holding up a mirror to what she sees (an amazingly distortion-free mirror, BTW) and she doesn’t like it either? I will say, that she must believe in the show, because piles of platinum ingots,pigeon’s blood rubies, and flawless, colorless 10-carat diamonds would not entice me to take my clothes off on TV.

30
posted on 01/30/2013 9:03:37 PM PST
by The Antiyuppie
("When small men cast long shadows, then it is very late in the day.")

It’s time for America to stand up for what is right and help those who are defenseless. There is too much complacency even among the churches. It is time to get serious about humantrafficking. Such an abomination needs to be eradicated.

What can be puzzling is trying to figure out how Dunham actually feels about her characters...quite true - while the show is trashy and at times disgusting, it is also funny, with some of the fun at Dunham's expense - one almost gets the feeling that she herself is not sure of what she thinks about a lot of this, and is trying to work it out in drama therapy - and conservatives should not necessarily expect to be offended by what they see - there've been several, if not pro-conservative, at least conservative-tolerant bits in the few episodes I've seen - when she leaves her black Republican boyfriend, he as much as tells her that she's just like all the other white girls who come to the big city and think the thing to do is hook up with a black man; when her gay-guy roomate berates her for dating a Republican, she retorts that she can't see anything wrong with that, and unexpectedly, he has no stinging comeback but sits in silence; when her character complains about the economy and says it's probably the fault of the Republicans, her girlfriend snaps that it's the fault of both parties, and ads "you should read a newspaper sometime - any newspaper - and find out what's going on" - at least there's been enough inoffensive stuff to keep me viewing, and hoping that eventually Lena will resolve all this in her own mind and end up joining the NRA and listening to Rush Limbaugh.....

in 1972 there were only 24,000 troops in Vietnam and draft had dwindled down since Vietnamization in 1969

Draft ended in 1973 period.

If Vietnam had been “the” issue(it wasn’t by then) then they woulda all voted for George since like Obama he woulda pulled out immediately and welcomed the Commies

Boomers have never been the libs youngsters love to bash them for. Most of the crap that has led to what we live with now was instituted in the 50s and 60s by boomer parents and grandparents..who were not mostly libs either by today’s standards though they did vote FDR in plenty

Most of the college radicals...Hoffman, Rubin, Horowitz, Rudd etc were not boomers but rather my folks age...I’m 55

Since some here love to bash anyone over 45 then I suggest they bash them for divorce rates...something that with the Elvis generation(b1930-47) and then Boomers (b1947-1965) surely merit the scorn

Some of those here who veritably hate folks their parents age were likely a product of that.

I am sorry. I raise all my kids.

40
posted on 01/31/2013 3:44:34 PM PST
by wardaddy
(wanna know how my kin felt during Reconstruction in Mississippi, you fixin to find out firsthand)

Agree. The Nixon/McGovern race was the 1st election in which I cast a vote. I remember a lot of people talking about ending the war, but my vote for Nixon was in large part an, “Oh HELL NO!” vote against McGovern. My parents followed suit and I grew up in a solidly conservative democrat household.

I read this article last week, and I understand the author's point completely. But he's dead wrong. First, when we cede the language we lose the argument, going out the gate. Basically he's saying, in the Culture War, such as it is, the Lost Girls of the Left, in this case, HBO controls the high ground of the battlefield, and in this case the Left gets to choose the ground.

Nonsense. All the Right has to do is stand for Truth, the existence of Truth, without any presumption of understanding truth exhaustively, in our personal and private lives, and that inevitably brings the battle to ourselves.

There's no way to have a meaningful discussion in a cesspool without getting the stink on us. Avoiding the cesspool, on the other hand, without consequence invites controversy in this culture the author seems to believe is in a majority.

It's the same "problem" Christian denominations often fail to solve by trying to sale the same hamburger on the other side of the street.

Why would anyone cross the road to check out your wares if you are engaged in offering the same hamburger they can get without crossing the street?

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